Termite TV - Life Stories

People say you turn into your parents. If that's true, I'm just screwed. 'Cause I'm genetically predisposed to be a reckless individual. I discovered that this weekend. Mind you I don't have the safest or most genteel attitude toward things as it is, but my father has got to be one of the most reckless human beings on the face of the earth. So anyway, we're working in the shop and he goes to pick up a 16-foot trailer with a bobcat, and for those who don't know what that is that's a little two-wheeled bulldozer. So he gets under the tongue of the trailer with the bobcat and he's pickin' it up and as he's doing it the bobcat doesn't run real good 'cause he got it secondhand, and so he's got a hammer whoopin' the side of it and gunnin' it with the throttle and it's just shakin' and twitchin' and belching smoke out and right as it gets up, he gets it up about to dump what's in the bed of the trailer the bobcat flutters, sputters and goes WHAM! And slams to the ground, bucket first. And as it does, my father, you gotta drive this thing with a t-bar, not a steering wheel. as it does, it hits, bounces my dad up out of it and he straddles the t-bar like that, rackin' himself on it. and when he hits that, it knocks the bobcat into forward, and so the trailer goes bouncin' out of the bucket and he goes careenin' through the side of the shop with this bobcat on two wheels, tryin' to say to keep from runnin' it over it. and he hops off the t-bar, kicks it back into neutral and he looks it over and goes, his only words as gas is spillin' out on this hot engine and there's just steam rising everywhere, he kicks the bobcat back into neutral and looks up and he goes 'well, I'll be damned.' He goes, he looks at this huge gaping hole in the side of the shop and he's like, 'I always wanted a door there.' But yeah... I don't know. He's just gotten worse with age, too. I try not to get myself killed most days. Not him, he's figured he's had a good life and off he goes. So later that day, we're moving all our equipment down the highway. My dad starts out, we're driving tractors with pecan harvesting equipment on 'em. My dad starts off on the back, at the very end and there's two more tractors in front of him and then a truck following us to make sure the cars go around us. Well, he gets bored because he's got the fast tractor. 18-wheelers hauling asphalt 'cause they're working on the road whizzing past us. And he gives a hand signal, turns out, shifts it into eighth gear and goes around one of us. And he can't see 'cause there's hauling, they're pulling these huge trailers and here comes a semi, horn baling. and he keeps like, he's just like 'scoot over, man! I'm comin' through!' And so off to the side of the road the semi goes and he goes whizzin' around that guy, whizzin' around the first guy then I look and here comes flying around me, driving a Yugo off into the ditch and just waving like mad. Well... Man, I hope that's not true about turnin' into your parents. cause if it is I'm just dead. that's all I got. Does it have to be five minutes?